Welcome to my homepage!
Who is Christof Wolf?
I was born in 1967. After a graduation in Business Administration I worked for the HR-Division of the German central bank. These days, I am responsible for the study organization office a well-known German University.
My inspiration:
I love to travel around the world and have already visited a lot of wonderful spots. I met people, who showed me how necessary tolerance and acceptance between different cultures and religions are. Of course, all these experiences have had a strong influence on my novels. But sometimes I do not have to invent the stories I tell, there are some plots which are just waiting for someone to tell them. Two times, such strange things happened to me, and one of those outstanding situations made me become an author.
The initializing Situation:
More than 16 years ago I lost my wife to cancer. To find back to life, I went to the US, just by myself. In New England, I wanted to send a message-in-a-bottle to my wife. We both loved to travel and went several times to the US. But when I went around the coastline I did not find the right place to throw my bottle into the sea. So an innervoice told me to take it back to Germany. “… one certain day, on another time and on another spot you will find a place to send your message!”
The story of how the message-in-a-bottle surrounded the world:
The following year I flew to Australia. It was my second time ‘down under’. My wife and I went there some years before and we fell in love with the country. For three weeks, I drove though the Outback areas and tried to find myself coming through and dealing with loneliness. When I went back to civilization, I reached a little fishermen-town called Albany. One morning, when I was hiking on a coast trail, I found the right place: a steep cliff. Of course I had my bottle with me. So I sent a prayer and threw it: Usually these days you are sent a confirmation notice, like “Message sent”. But of course nothing like this will happen if you send a message-in-a-bottle. But sometimes the unexpected will happen. How?
What happened, was unbelievable ... shortly spoken: My wife got the message and she sent me a confirmation. How is that?
The bottle was found by an Australian police-officer. He took it to a newspaper. They published an article with a photo of him and a short text. In the text they mentioned my name and Hachenburg, the town I live in. The newspaper was read by a young German woman in Albany, she lives there because she is married to an Aussie. She recognized the city of Hachenburg, because she originally comes from that region, which is called the Westerwald (translated: Western-forest or West-wood). Her parents still live there, in the town of Hoehr-Grenzhausen, which is famous for pottery and the glass-producers Rastal and Sahm (look at the glass, when you drink a beer. It does not matter whether you are in the US or in South Africa or Australia … you will often read the company's name Rastal).
So the young lady called her mother in Germany and told her about the article and the man who wrote the message-in-the-bottle. Her mother said, that she would look up in the telephone-book and find out if there was a man with that name: There was!It was me. So she picked up the phone and called me. You perhaps can imagine how surprised I felt and how shocked I was. Especially because the lady on the phone told me: “Susan called me some minutes ago!” Susan was the name of her daughter, but it was the name of my wife, too. After a while, when we stopped talking, I began to cry – because I recognized, that my Susan sent me a sign from where ever she is now! She sent me her confirmation – she has got my message and appreciated what I wrote. For me it was the confirmation and her spur on me, that I should go on and take my life into my own hands. And that is what I did then …
That was, why I began writing a novel:
After a while I wrote down the story of my message-in-the-bottle, because I wanted to memorize this outstanding event of my life. I thought, I have to write everything down, so I would be able to remember every detail when I am old. Otherwise people will say: "Oh look at this old man, he is mixing up fiction and reality. He is getting nuts ..." When I showed the first 30 pages to a friend, he recommended to keep on writing. He said it will be a good way of therapy, too, to deal with my sorrow.So I went on writing my own story: The story of Hanna (Susan) and Benjamin (that's me). The manuscript became a size of nearly 700 pages; the story of the message-in-the-bottle became the prologue!
The way the story got published - it was like a miracle:
One day another miracle happened: I mentioned on XING (social network) that ‘I like writing’ and that ‘I had already prepared a manuscript’. I got a mail from the publisher Acabus-Verlag Hamburg and they asked what the manuscript was about. I answered the mail and some days later, they offered me a contract. After the lectorate was finished, they published my story in the way of a modern trilogy: Sunrise - Sunshine - Sunset A modern, dramatic, lovely and unbelievable LOVE STORY (comparable to Erich Segal, who published his wonderful story in the 70s and promoted the tissue-industry a huge surplus). The trilogy takes you around the world (mostly to the US: like Los Angeles, NYC, Hawaii, Washington D.C. but to Australia, too).
The following project:
After the success of the trilogy people asked me about more stories. So I thought of what I can write now. A crime story?A medieval story? Then I decided to write a medieval story because I was interested in history. I constructed a plot which combined authentic parts of history with fiction. And 2011 I published Civitas (latin for City) anno domini 1200 – Das Geheimnis der Rose (The secret of the Rose). A success-story which was nominated as BEST NEWCOMER HISTORIC NOVELS on LOVELYBOOKS.de
And now I have finished SIX(!) new projects:
Millenium-Woman - A Story of Shadow and Light
The epic novel which follows the extraordinary live of a woman for over one century:
“Millennium Woman" is the story of an unloved daughter who became a shiny American Frollein. There is an English version of exposé of the Frollein's story on the next side (About my stories ... ), if you want to know more about that
outstanding and unbelievable story.
Brand new: My thriller series "DOOMED TO DIE - ...
... The Academy." (Die Akademie)
... The Saviour." (Die Heilsbringerin)
... The Followers." (Die Gefolgschaft)
... The Shepherd." (Der Hirte)
... The Surgeon." (Der Chirurg)
All details about my already published novels as well as about my new projects can be found here.
The copyrights are still available!
Thank you very much for your attention.
Warmest regards,
Christof Wolf